At 03:04 PM 4/9/2003, Elliot Noss wrote:
>Ok. Let me try like this. It would be irresponsible, especially as a public
>company, to comment on rumours that deal with M&A. In my years doing this
>there have been, literally, hundreds. To even deny things that had
>absolutely no basis could preclude discussions that may be very
>advantageous.
>
>Let me give you a real example. Many years ago (in a land far away) when we
>were primarily a content company there was a small website that was run by a
>couple guys that I was quite friendly with. There was a rumour on a list
>frequented by shareware and freeware developers who were/are the biggest
>constituency for our software business. The rumour said that we were going
>to do a deal with that website. I was both much more naive and a private
>company at the time and I leapt in and categorically denied the rumour. Six
>months later that website was sold to one of our competitors in a deal that
>was not great for the guys running it (who I really liked). When I called
>them saying "hey, why didn't you call me if you were looking to do a deal"
>they told me that they had read my denial of the rumour and had assumed I
>wasn' interested!
>
>The competitor, who was smaller then us at the time, levered that
>acquisition in to a large IPO and an even larger sale of the whole company
>months later. Lesson learned.
>
>I hope this helps.
Well, I understand that. Hopefully you can understand this... I feel no
better than before about the rumor itself. If you can't comment, who
can? Is that planned or are we left to wonder until it happens (or
hopefully doesn't). I'm missing something, surely, but I can't see how
letting such as rumor run rampant is good...unless it's true and denying it
would be a lie (not saying are or would, I sincerely don't believe you would).
-- Phillip Beazley Onvix -- Website Hosting, Development & E-commerce Visit http://www.onvix.com/ or call 727-578-9600.
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